I had braced myself for bitterness. I expected bitter temperatures and bitter strangers who didn’t have time for an outsider’s confusion at where to begin in an unknown part of the country. It turns out, I was wrong.
My brother Andrew and I, along with my partner Jill, flew by way of Nashville to Paducah, Kentucky, on a Sunday night in mid-January to settle the affairs of our middle brother, JW, who had dropped dead suddenly at seventy-one from what the coroner could best ascertain was a massive cardiac event. No warning. No preamble. Just a phone call from a stranger in a small Kentucky town to a number in Seattle, and just like that, he was gone.
We had visited Paducah once, briefly, a decade or so prior – a quick two days at JW's place and that was the extent of it. He himself had spent the better part of over two decades there, lured south from the East Coast by a first cousin who needed a horse whisperer for the breeding and show farm she and her husband were building. Before that, he'd done a fine stretch selling cars. But he was a loner. More like a porcupine, I've always thought, with a soft and generous underbelly, beloved by his nieces and nephews, and gifted beyond measure with animals. A great storyteller who had led a storied life, he could schmooze with genuine warmth and, rarer still, actually listen. So he'd gone south and mostly stayed.
We expected a grim errand. What we got was something else entirely.
The first sign that Paducah was not going to play by the rules I expected came before we'd even unpacked our bags. When we let our extended family know that JW had taken the stairway (hopefully) to heaven, that same first cousin who beckoned him to Paducah (but who had since moved out of state some time ago and sold the ranch) responded within minutes that, by happenstance, she was going to be in Paducah when we got there to attend a baby shower, and would stay on a bit to help. What were the odds of that confluence? And what karma, or poetic justice, having our very same cousin who brought our brother in to help, now send him home with us? Grateful is an understatement.
But it didn’t stop there. The fire department captain, who also wears the deputy coroner's hat in this river town, had called us in Seattle days earlier with the initial grim news. Now, he called again. He had draft death certificates and an incident report ready. He explained these were not official, but perhaps useful while we sorted through whether JW had any local banking and finances. “Come pick them up whenever you like,” he said. “We're heading out to dinner. We'll leave the back door open for you.”
My jaw dropped. In every city I have lived in or visited – and there have been a few – entering a fire station has involved buzzing in, stating your name and purpose, having someone peer at you through a camera or a reinforced window, and then asking you again what you wanted before the door opened. And that was for a blood pressure check. And here was this man, offering us unsupervised access to a municipal building because it was convenient for us.
Andrew and I went. The station was empty, quiet, a little surreal in the way only an idle firehouse can be. And there, set out on a table near the back, were our paperwork and – I am not making this up – a slice of cake. Just in case, apparently, we needed a sugar-high dessert to keep us going.
We stood there for a moment, two brothers: one close to, and the other in his seventies, both suddenly fifteen again. “Okay, Andrew,” I heard myself say, in the same Brooklyn accent we'd never quite shed, “we've got a choice here. We can either take a fire engine out for a joy ride, or we can just sit in the front and take selfies.” It was the belly laugh we desperately needed. We did neither, of course. Instead, leaving some thank-you notes and small gifts for the crew, we latched the back door and walked out into the cold.
The week that followed was a masterclass in what hospitality actually looks like when it stops being a “Southern hospitality” slogan and starts being an action.
The probate attorney we contacted was a stranger, recommended by our cousin and the undertaker. She was booked out for weeks. But when her office learned we were arriving Sunday night and hoping to accomplish everything in just under a week, she and her paralegal spent the preceding Friday and Saturday getting everything ready with us long distance. She also recommended a realtor.
That realtor showed up the very next day with her broker. They toured JW’s property thoroughly. The two double-wide mobile homes, the cars, the furniture, all of it. When I began to ask about estate sale companies and donation options (worrying about where our brother’s things would actually end up, and intent on them going somewhere of real need rather than just another Goodwill bin) one of the realtors put a hand gently on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, simply: “Don't worry. We'll take care of it all.”
And then they told us how. And then they said there would be no additional charge for any of it. We stood there, speechless in Paducah.
They gathered the paperwork. They explained which utilities to keep running and how to redirect the mail. They promised to come back soon to check on the place, shut off the water, and find good homes for JW’s plants. And they did every last thing.
The funeral home associate director expedited the paperwork and arrangements long distance without tacking on a dime, so that everything was ready the moment we arrived. He gave us all the time we needed to ask questions, to sit with our brother in a private room, and to say goodbye. Curious about him – he had a gentle, unhurried presence – we asked how he'd come to work in the business. He told us a story about attending a family member's funeral at fourteen, and how he'd begun volunteering at that same funeral home shortly after, then working there gradually over the years. It was a riveting story, told with warmth, and it made us feel strangely at ease. As though we'd wandered into one of the more poignant episodes of Six Feet Under.
Three weeks later, when we were back in Seattle and Santa Cruz, he called Andrew and me individually, just to check in on how each of us was doing. He also offered to hand-deliver the death certificates directly to the attorney and accountant down the street to save us the hassle.
The fire captain called again too, weeks after the fact. Not for any official reason, but because there had been a storm, and he went to make sure JW’s roof and trees had held up. They had.
JW’s guitar collection found a worthy home at Allen Music downtown, a shop that is four generations strong and celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. We got a fair price (different from the Brooklyn-style haggling we had grown up with) and the folks shared wonderful stories about the place: about guitars, and about the long, strange lineage of instruments passing through their hands. I like to think some of our brother’s guitars will end up teaching the next generation of players. He would have liked that.
Now. About the Chinese restaurant.
Overtired, stressed, and freshly arrived from Seattle and Santa Cruz, we piled into the car on our first night in town. The GPS – navigated by one of us, who shall remain nameless – mysteriously directed us away from where we had programmed it and to what appeared to be a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place. It was late. The restaurant was empty, small, and decorated with the kind of laminated photo-menu you see at a Panda Express. We walked in wearing our disappointment openly.
The staff saw it. They smiled. They beckoned us closer, and from under the counter produced a multi-page, comprehensive menu: a document of real ambition and range that bore no resemblance to the sad photos on the wall. We ate. It was, for our native New York City palates, genuinely good.
The next morning, we steeled ourselves and entered JW’s house for the first time. We headed straight for his desk, the logical place to look for important papers, insurance documents, anything that might tell us where to begin. Jill picked up the very first piece of paper on top of the pile.
It was the takeout menu for No. 1 Chinese Food, the restaurant where we had been inexplicably led the prior evening.
You can draw your own conclusions about whether our brother had somehow known, or orchestrated, where we'd end up eating the night before. We certainly have.
We did, eventually, find authentic local barbecue at Starnes Barbecue. A daytime-only joint, no frills, sandwiches served on white bread toast for around four dollars with a side, and exactly one classic sauce. We bought bottles of it back to Seattle and Santa Cruz. Felt like local comfort food.
And, true confession, while us “outsiders” either cotton to country western music or avoid it like nails grating on a chalk board, I appreciated the nonstop country western that played on almost every local radio station during our stay, especially working in JW’s house. As I’m writing this, Zack Top is accompanying me to soothe my soul.
On our last night in Paducah, our brother had one more thing to say.
In his freezer, bought recently, per the label, was a whole pastrami. Not a Kentucky pastrami wannabe. A genuine Brooklyn pastrami overnighted from our boyhood neighborhood to celebrate the holidays and the New Year. JW hadn’t opened it yet.
So Andrew made the sandwiches, slathered with appropriate fixings. Then the three of us sat down on JW’s couch in his double-wide mobile home. He had spent real time and real care assembling a surround-sound system in that living room; the kind of meticulous, proud project that reveals something true about a person.
Our brother spent over two decades in Paducah and, by his own admission, made no close friends. But when he was gone, his town took care of us. To say “Thank you, Paducah,” is an understatement. Thank you for going beyond the usual call of “let me know if I can be of help,” and instead just jumping in and helping.